After 5500km on the road & almost 4 days on ferries...

...I got back home. Quite welcoming eh?

Though I was dead tired I did gave her a much deserved and overdue service:

Before that I had to queue with other bikers at the port of (very hot as usual in summer) Ancona

where I had to offer my congrats to this great German Dad who took his daughter on a bike trip to Greece. Hard to find such attitude in other nationalities. Both riding bikes MUCH older than his daughter who looks like 16 - no way she's older than 20. Hats off:

Sorry my lovely shows, after so many years and countless km you deserved a much better end but I had to dump you on the ferry. You've been great so far.

We have some of the best blue in the world here in Greece:

Thanks everyone who followed/cared/waited for me to come back in one piece.

Here's the whole route:

Urkiola, Basque country.

I won't bother you with my text. Let the pics 'n vids do the talking:

Alicante 2

Last night I slept in the balcony outside and that's the morning view:

Yes it's quite enough in some places in Alicante to do so. Have a short tour with the tram to see how the city looks like:

A visit to the beautiful local archaeological museum...

brought me close to some interesting Maya items:

Last but not least this guy deserved more than one picture:

The quite tall buildings trying to offer as many flats with sea view as possible is one of the characteristics of this city:

However this city is too pretty to allow them to spoil her. Especially around this time that they celebrate the beginning of summer with various events taking place around the center:

Sorry but that this ship deserves a lot of pictures:

What is really impressive about the city of Alicante is that it offers such an amazing level of living to its people. The weather is amazing, even the hottest days seem bearable, the air feels fresh always, the light of the day is so bright and vivid that must be the only place I've been that can compete my birthplace's region on that and last but not least the effortless access to the sea. Half of the people walk the streets on swim suits :) Here's why:

Tomorrow morning I leave for Almeria. I'm doing good so far skipping the heatwave. See you ;)

Alicante

This was my breakfast view before I left Valencia behind.

The first 50km on my way to Alicante were rather boring and (even worse) smelling like shit. Literally. Top WTF time. It got better and more scenic later with quite nice temperatures close to Mariola and Maigmo mountains. Speaking of temperatures we expect a huge heatwave and I already think about spending my time somewhere high at Nevada till it cools down a bit. Right now is still OK and allows me to enjoy a wonderful city like Alicante:

Amazing. Hands down. What a sweet place is this. IN the city of Alicante you can enjoy beaches like this where there's no one around you in a radius of 30m. Perfect.The city itself looks very nice and I'm sure it will offer quite pleasant walks hopefully tomorrow (hence no more pictures today). Stay tuned ;)

Valencia

Rather pleasant weather today. Or at least less hot than I expected. OK the swimming pool was too warm to resist so last minute I decided to have a short soak.
Funny but on my way to Valencia I met a river with same name as ours in Greece (Evros) wich also has a "delta" like ours does. Therefore I pictured its beautiful bridge:

Later on I had one of the most needed and refreshing stops I ever had in my biking career:

On hot days like these a couple of trees bring you to heaven.

Valencia is quite beautiful. The sweetness of the European South is here. I didn't have time and guts to walk a lot as I usually do in cities I visit for the first time so I took my bike for a spin around and took some pictures:

When they paint in Valencia they really do!

Tomorrow @ Alicante ;)